Volkswagen Group Named World’s Most Innovative Global Automaker

The Germany-based Center of Automotive Management, in cooperation with PricewaterhouseCoopers, named the Volkswagen Group the world’s most innovative automotive company in its 2014 AutomotiveINNOVATIONS Awards.

For Volkswagen Group, this marks the fourth consecutive time it scored the top award.

The Center of Automotive Management awarded Mercedes-Benz as the most innovative brand, followed by BMW, VW, Audi and then Ford.

VW Group Wins Again

VW e-Golf

As for Volkswagen Group’s win, the Center of Automotive Management stated:

“The number of innovations at the company further increased to nearly 230 this year. Volkswagen impressed us with an enormous range of innovations in all technological fields and with several highly innovative brands in the Group.”

Volkswagen Group picked up a win in the “alternative drives” category too. The Center of Automotive Management stated that the most remarkable innovation for the Group is the Porsche Panamera S E Hybrid—the first plug-in hybrid premium luxury sedan.

According to Green Car Congress, specifics for selection were as follows:

The Center of Automotive Management (CAM) in Bergisch-Gladbach is an independent institute for empirical research on automotive and mobility issues, and it conducts the extensive study together with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) AG WPG. This year’s analysis covered 18 global automotive companies and a total of 53 brands.

Innovations are defined as new developments which offer tangible additional customer benefits. The innovations must be already available or they must at least have been presented in developed prototypes.

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I still remember the ‘study’ conducted by the WWF and Allianz, which purported to show Germany as the least emitting of CO2 country in Europe per capita.

Close study of the footnotes eventually elicited the information that the WWF did not much fancy nuclear power, as so had treated nuclear power, most notably that of France AS THOUGH it had been produced by natural gas, so creating a surreal world of virtual CO2 molecules.

This was of course a gross and wilful attempt to deceive the public by the WWF and Allianz, which no organisation possessed of the slightest tinge of honesty would have contemplated.

I treat German awards to German companies with a degree off scepticism since that.

“I still remember the ‘study’ conducted by the WWF and Allianz, which purported to show Germany as the least emitting of CO2 country in Europe per capita.”

That’s not what the study claimed. The ranking is based on whether a country is on track to meet the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2050. It is not just about current emissions, but also about the trend and about each countries policies for future development.

It’s obvious to me that nuclear power should not be rated the same as real sustainable energy sources like hydro, wind and solar. So I see nothing wrong in adjusting for that. And the study was open about it, so it’s not a misrepresentation.

Germany trickly cheated their reduction archivements, because in the base value they counted in all the old heavy industry from the DDR, which then got completely scraped.
When you look at the emission reduction of Western Germany only, they have massive missed the targets.

I don’t follow your logic. Of course the old plants in the former GDR had the most urgent need for modernization. That’s exactly what happened, and it cost Germany enormous amounts of money. Why would you consider that cheating?

I don’t get the constant Germany bashing by some posters here. They have by far the most aggressive (and costly) renewable energy policy of any industrialized country with their “Energiewende”.

Nope. ‘The World Wildlife Foundation continuously makes so called “climate scorecards” for the G8 countries. Since the issue of whether a nation is acting in an environmentaly sound manner or not is a very complex one, the WWF is making these scorecards that summarize the G8 countries and gives them a ranking which makes it easier to see how they are doing.’ And: ‘ 1 WWF does not consider nuclear power to be a viable policy option. The indicators “emissions per capita”, “emissions per GDP” and “CO2 per kWh electricity” for all countries have therefore been adjusted as if the generation of electricity from nuclear power had produced 350 g CO2/kWh (emission factor for natural gas). Without the adjustment, the original indicators for France would have been much lower, e.g. 86 g CO2/kWh. There it is, in plain writing. They changed the numbers, simply because they don’t like nuclear power, thus down-ranking France despite being the lowest emitter of carbon dioxide by far of the G8 countries. They cheated on the scorecard by tweaking the numbers.’ http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/blog/tag/carbon-dioxide/ So there it is. I read the report and it was nothing to do with hitting compliance targets, it was solely about relative… Read more »

The overall performance of the G8 countries is assessed by comparing three groups of indicators: “improvements since 1990”, “current status” and “policies for the future”. In addition, G8 countries’ performance in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy and the development of the carbon market are summarized separately.

The core benchmark of this assessment is whether countries are on track to reduce emissions by 95 % until 2050.

And as you wrote, they clearly and openly explained why they didn’t treat nuclear energy the same as real sustainable energy sources.

I’d say the propaganda is on the side of the nuclear power apologists. Nuclear power is not sustainably and highly dangerous. It should not be treated the same as renewables. France, for example, does very little to promote renewables, and they don’t deserve a high score just because they run lots of nuclear plants.

The link was what came up when I googled,
I have indeed read the whole report, and indeed I was the one who contacted Allianz about the duplicitous claptrap they have put their name to.

The report clearly shows and headlines Germany as number one, then footnotes the lunacy:
‘A country using nuclear energy is therefore rated as a country using gas, the most efficient fossil fuel.’

If you imagine that is anything but absurd, then it is not surprising that you also have zero idea of risk assessment and so fantasise about the imagined dangers of nuclear power.

If you want to group yourself with that bunch of people who don’t know the meaning of an honest presentation, then like them you are trying to dupe the public, perhaps because your fantasies like theirs can’t cope with the light of day or rational analysis.